


In The Beginning

by eleuther



Series: Dear Friends [1]
Category: Bohemian Rhapsody (Movie 2018), Bohemian Rhapsody (Movie 2018) Actor RPF
Genre: Abuse, Angst, Domestic Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Past Abuse, Past Child Abuse, Past Domestic Violence, ben is kinda a mess, ben needs a hug, but hes trying his best, but its fine, he has some shit he needs to work through, im projecting here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-15
Updated: 2019-05-15
Packaged: 2020-01-15 05:42:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18492532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eleuther/pseuds/eleuther
Summary: Ben has been through some shit. It's time his costars find out just how much.





	In The Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> PLEASE READ THE TAGS!!!!!!! this gets really heavy, really suddenly!
> 
> im going to put a more detailed warning in the endnotes to avoid spoilers, but this deals heavily with child abuse and domestic violence. it is implied from the very beginning and gets increasingly detailed as the fic progresses.
> 
> please read the tags and the endnotes if this may be something that triggers you. be safe yall, don't read anything that is going to hurt you.
> 
> ALSO, this is purely fictional and not to be taken seriously !!!! I know nothing of Ben and his personal life, I honestly can't remember if he actually has a brother but I think he does ?? if not just pretend for the sake of the story. I edited this hundreds of times but there's probably still mistakes in there, so all of those are mine.

**October 2017**

_Tick. Tick. Tick._

Ben listened and watched as the clock neared three in the morning. He knew sleep would be pointless, he had to be up at five, but he was so tired.

This happened sometimes. He would spend too much time thinking, and then he wouldn’t be able to sleep. He thought about a lot of things; his friends, his job, how he got to where he is. His dad. 

God, he hated his father. He destroyed Ben and his brother in ways very few can imagine. He always tries to push those thoughts away as soon as they come, but sometimes he can’t. Sometimes he has nightmares every night for weeks on end, as if the scars aren't reminder enough. Sometimes he wonders if he should tell someone. 

Ben hasn’t told a soul since he was nineteen and too naive to think about what telling others would do. He figured since it was over, there was no harm. Except everyone expected you to break the moment something even remotely close to it was mentioned, and then they expect you to be okay with them trying to hurt you too. So he doesn’t talk about it.

He wonders what Joe and Gwil and Rami would think if he told them. He wonders if they ever look at the scars lining his arms and wonder.

(He knows they do, everyone does. They’ve had the decency to mind their own business so far.)

The clock changes to 3:17 and he decides to get up. Sleep is pointless and he knows it would be harder to wake up at five if he fell asleep now. 

A shower and some coffee should do.

 

It’s a week later when Ben knows for sure that they suspect something. 

They’re all hanging out at Gwil’s flat, drinking a little and laughing a lot; just getting to know each other better. There’s some joke or story that Joe is telling about his childhood when it happens. "We were just horsing around, nothing serious, when his fist was suddenly flying at my face!" He mimes the incident in Ben's direction and suddenly he’s cowering on the floor, beer spilled across the ground and apologies spilling out for something he can’t remember. 

The laughter stops and silence rings through the room. Ben gets up and leaves as quick as he can.

(He’ll be dreaming about the horrified looks on their faces for weeks.) 

Joe texts him a million times about how sorry he is, but he doesn’t respond. 

They treat him like glass the next day. 

 

The next instance is a little more public and, Ben thinks, a little more deliberate. Like they want him to tell them on his own.

(It's not deliberate, not at all, Gwil just gets too argumentative sometimes.)

Gwilym and Ben are out getting lunch when a casual conversation turns into a debate about something or other that quickly goes sour. Gwil disagrees with something he said and begins to raise his voice to make his point, only slightly because he knows they’re in public, but raises it all the same. He doesn’t stop yelling, barely realizes he is or that he's slowly leaned towards him until Ben violently flinches away from him. He looks, horrified, at the blonde’s shaking hands and chewed lips, eyes cast down as if the table will tell him what he said wrong. Gwil immediately apologizes softly and they finish their meal in silence, Ben more picking than eating. 

He sits as far away from him as the car will allow on the way home, and avoids Gwil for a week afterward. 

 

Ben wonders how much longer he can keep up the pretense that everything is normal. He knows they know, or at least have an idea. And it’s obvious everyone else on set has an idea of something - whether their right or not is a different question - too, which is more humiliating than anything. 

He lashes out when Roger approaches him, asking if there is or was anything going on at home. ‘At home’, as if this is high school again and his teachers are suspecting where the bruises are coming from. 

He figures it is kind of like that and sends a long apology to Roger that night. He tells Ben not to worry, that he understands and that he’s always available if he needs to talk. Ben wants to cry at the response. 

 

In the end, it’s Rami that asks him outright. 

He’s been slowly distancing himself; if they’ve figured it out they’ll want answers and he isn’t sure he can give them without ruining the little thing they have going on. He figures it’s easier this way, that maybe they’ll stop worrying and once filming is done he’ll never have to speak to any of them again. 

But none of them will let that happen. There’s no shortage to their patience with him as they continually ask him out after they’ve wrapped for the day despite knowing he’ll say no. They don’t let him lock himself away in his trailer during lunches or his flat on weekends. 

It’s no surprise when Rami knocks softly one day and asks what’s been going on. He’s seen it coming. He just hoped he’d have more time to prepare himself. 

Ben doesn’t expect to cry when he starts to talk. He never had before. He’s desensitized himself to what happened so much that he thinks it’ll be a breeze, and that’s really his only consolation when he figures it's now or never. 

Rami doesn’t interrupt him once as he speaks and wraps him into a tight embrace when he starts shaking so bad he can barely think. He lets Ben sob into his chest and doesn’t push him any further when he can’t stop and really Ben wonder’s what he did to deserve such an amazing friend. 

 

Rami promises not to tell the others as long as he eventually does. He tells Ben how scary it’s been to see his change in behavior from the moment Joe aimed that punch. He brings up the lunch he had with Gwilym and apologizes when Ben flinches at the mention. 

Ben says he’ll try to tell them soon, and that seems to be good enough.

Soon turns out to be the next week when the four of them are lounging around the green room. Ben is hunched in a chair by himself and the other three are sparing worried glances his way. 

The words start spilling the moment he locks eyes with Joe and sees tears threatening to spill.

He starts with the beginning, of course; it wasn’t physical, just yelling when they did something wrong. His friends had always said their parents yelled sometimes.

(Maybe every day wasn’t normal, but he wasn’t too sure. Maybe calling a six-year-old a little bitch and punching the wall next to his head wasn’t normal either.)

When he turned ten his father decided it was time to start hitting him. His brother soon followed, and his mother too but that wasn’t as often and Ben thinks his dad truly loved his mom but just got a little too angry sometimes. 

Ben had known his father didn’t love him from the day he turned eight and was yelled at for thinking he’d get something as silly as a cake. 

When he tells the story of the time he got screamed at while out for dinner with his family Gwil looks incredibly guilty, but the humiliation Ben felt both times makes it difficult for him to feel bad. 

He talks about all the times he and his brother tried to protect each other from their dad, and how it always made it worse but they couldn’t help it. Their mom did her best but they’d rather she do nothing if it meant he’d leave her alone. 

He talks about the day his brother finally snapped and “beat the living shit out of him, really, it was insane. I thought he was going to kill him.”

He knows it’s more detail than he gave to Rami. It’s probably more than he needed to give at all given the looks on their faces, so he apologizes for making them listen to all his crap. Then he apologizes for hiding it for so long because he should have trusted them with this so long ago. They try to brush off the apologies but he shakes his head. 

“You’ve all trusted me with your struggles. I should have done the same.”

Joe doesn’t hesitate to shut him down, saying “You don’t owe us anything.”

 

Ben thinks he shouldn't be so surprised that things really don’t change much. They refrain from fake punches and public arguments, but they don’t stop fooling around or jokingly call him names. And they definitely don’t hesitate in calling him out or voicing their opinions to him.

But he has three amazing friends, best friends, and he the next time he lied awake thinking he thought about how grateful he was to have them.

And if he maybe wanted them to be a little more, he thought about what it would be like to lose them.

**Author's Note:**

> IN THIS FIC:  
> \- vivid descriptions of physical, mental/emotional, and verbal abuse  
> \- typical reactions in certain situations of those who have been abused
> 
> this is really heavy. im sort of projecting here, so please be careful reading this. if anyone ever wants to talk or vent or rant or whathaveyou, my tumblr is alldead-ontime. my message box is always open.
> 
> also i hinted at roger previously being abused. hes mentioned it once or twice but never in detail, i think once was in a queen documentary but dont quote me on that. anyway thats that on that. i do hope you all enjoyed and if theres anything i missed in the warnings or tags please let me know!!
> 
> PLEASE READ:  
> I am posting this the day before my computer gets fixed, im an idiot and dropped it and the screen still works but the outer edge is popping off and my charger will not fit anymore. if you do comment any missed tags or message me i likely wont see it right away as i do not log onto archive on my phone very often. so i apologize for that. also i wont be uploading or writing anything for a few weeks which is gonna kill me a little so im sorry for that as well.


End file.
